Eye Spy 4
Dreams and Fantasies
11 Jun 1988 – 21 Feb 1989
Mirka Mora, Mask for Chorus (1), (purple face, blue hair, red head band), 111865, National Gallery of Australia, Kamberri/Canberra, purchased 1981. © Mirka Mora.
About
The Education section of the Australian National Gallery welcomed visitors to a fourth exhibition in the popular Eye Spy series for children. It was entitled Dreams and Fantasies, and was accessible via the ramps taking you to the lower level of the Gallery and then crossing the Sculpture Gallery.
In this gallery you would find a space filled with the dreams and fantasies of some of the most important artists and designers of this century.
We encouraged you and your children to participate actively in this colourful exhibition by formulating your own stories and dreams around the objects you view. Imagination is your password to this experience.
In this space you would have discovered illuminated scene models, costumes from ballet and opera, strange assemblages of objects in boxes, and works as bizarre as a boat made out of cloves and a winged car with teeth. There are exquisite objects, whimsical ones and sometimes fearsome ones.
With peepholes at child eye level unusual aspects of the works become visible. The entire space was indeed scaled to child size and invited you, too, to experience close visual contact from low vantage points.
After enjoying this exhibition visitors may have liked to find other works in the Gallery where artists investigated dream as a source of art imagery. Look for the works of Duchamp, Arp, Höch, Miro, Tanguy and Gorky, as well as the costumes designed by Henri Matisse for the ballet Le Chant du Rossignol.
Dreaming is also fundamental to Aboriginal art, and while the Indigenous concept of dreaming differs from our western point of view, the viewing of these works, located in various galleries of the building, added another dimension to a visit to the Australian National Gallery.
– Elizabeth Ruinard, James Dexter, Education, ANG.
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